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2001.07.01 : 2001.07.07
Saturday, July 7, 2001
Blab. Furthering our advanced education on the effects
of time on cows, a reader writes:
Regarding the aged beef I
served you the other night. I asked about it at the market this morning.
It is DRY aged. In fact, I stood and looked at the most incredible
hunks T-bone sitting behind a glass window looking VERY aged! Dark
brown aged. We'll have to try that one next. As for tonight,
we're having marinated flank steak..............
We live such a pampered life.
Blab. Taking up the gauntlet of poetry with the title To
Hit Armor Class Zero, a reader writes:
In honor of Thief II, the
best poem I could muster in 10 minutes:
To hit armor class zero:
A feat fit for a hero,
but not this humble man
Combat is a poor bet, I'll
prefer to wield my mettle
to form a subtle plan
An arrow to extinguish.
In dark he won't distinguish
my black form from the night
A taste for blood I'm lacking,
but the gold I'll soon be packing
shows mind can master might.
-pTang
Very nice! And in the ten minutes we did not spend playing Thief
II this weekend, we really appreciated it.
Blab. Andy Kaufman himself comes back from the grave to give
us this:
And now, Dork Haiku.
My poor novice mage.
To hit armor-class zero,
Must roll 21.
Thank you very much.
Blab. A reader, consumed with formerly fashionable gamage, writes:
D&D
3e illustrations...
e ?
Yo. It's the weekend again. That's the third time this week.
Weird.
Yak.
All of my take-aways are
action items.
Yak. A new Helenism,
this one from an interminable conference call with an unnamed government
agency.
A red smoking gun
-
Caught red-handed
-
A smoking gun
 Plurp.
The blue dog once
took an
armor class
Friday, July 6, 2001
Blab. Trying to re-enslave our emancipated
meme, a reader sends us a 10 MB MP3 file, proclaiming:
"Right Here, Right Now",
by Fat Boy Slim
The advert is for the new york stock
exchange, but it's not on adcritic.
 For
those of you who have the great good fortune not to have heard the entire
"song", we will restrict our remarks to noting that the lyrics make
Louie
Louie seem positively erudite.
Blab. A reader with an advanced case of paranoia writes:
Regarding Big Brother in
Tampa.......... What
about that car rental agency that monitors your speed limit via the GPS
in their cars? Hmmm..... you just ain't alone anywhere anymore.
What about all those activities IN their cars? What's next?
McDonald's probably knows that I got that Ham and Cheese sandwich yesterday!
Who are they going to tell? Weight Watchers?????
Just what were you doing in that car? What do you have to
hide?
Blab. A reader demonstrates its familiarity with the
obscure.
 THAC0
Oh dear. It sounds like a hacker handle, doesn't it? Or, expanded, the
title of a cyberpunk poem: To Hit Armor Class Zero.
Readers are invited to submit
poetry with this title.
 Blab.
In the never-ending quest to balance the memes, a reader attempts the following.
steve blabmaster
When you can take the Weblog from my hand, it will be time for you to go.
 Yo.Yesterday's
mystery of david chessmaster is intensified by a similar posting
to Dave's
log.
Is this a conspiracy, or a plot?
We may never know.
 Plurp.
Friend David at work suggests that genericized brand names (e.g. kleenex
for some generic tissue that you wipe your nose on) are examples of emancipated
memes. He thinks we could do a sociology paper on the topic, studying
how memes become emancipated as they pass generically into the culture.
Perhaps in my dotage I'll be a sociologist.
 Plurp.
The third of the Three
Big Lies:
-
Do not remove from aircraft
Will not work with home devices
Unless they mean toasters, of course.
Plurp. On Wednesday night we made steak au poivre from some aged
beef that Helen found at the store. In spite of me foaming half a cup of
boiling cream all over the innards of the stove (thus providing an excellent
motivation for cleaning the stove, inside and out, later that evening),
dinner was fantastic.
 Between
the meat itself and that wonderful cream, it has more fat than an overweight
whale, and I'm sure that's part of the reason it tastes so good. But it's
also because the beef was aged. I'm not sure I've ever had aged beef before.
There are two kinds of aged beef: wet and dry. Both involve letting
the meat age (hence the name) for 1-3 weeks at a low temperature. Wet aging
encases the meat in plastic pouches so they sit in their own juices. Dry
aging lets the meat hang without covering it.
There seems to be some debate about what's responsible for the flavor
change. There's general agreement that its partly because the meat dries
out, losing around 20% of its water content, which concentrates the flavor.
But there are also chemical changes in the meat, and these are either due
to "enzymes
breaking down" the meat itself, "enzymes
breaking down" in the meat, or "bacteria"
depending on who you ask. A less
plausible theory has it that flies (which don't exist in commercial
aging facilities) spit up bacteria onto the surface of the meat as they
feast upon it themselves, and the bacteria "get into the meat" and tenderize
it. Yes, that is gross.
My own guess is that there are enzymes in the meat that break down some
of the longer molecules, tenderizing it and changing its chemistry a bit.
I'd further guess that the "enzymes breaking down in the meat" theory
comes from purveyors of beef who never did well in biochemistry, and that
the "bacteria" theory comes from people who never bothered to look into
it at all. That fly story just seems like reasoning from unrelated facts,
and we do not predict a successful career in science for its author.
But whatever aged beef is, it's definitely not this.
Plurp.
Yes, the blue dog
was having fun with Google
image search thank
you very much.
Thursday, July 5, 2001
Blab. In the first of two mysteries today, a reader
writes:
david chessmaster
... which just seemed destined to be an inverse
link, but no! Impossible though it may be to believe, Google has zero
hits on this.
We wonder what it means.
Blab. Number two in today's brief series of reader contributed
mysteries is this:
Sometimes they come in droves.
It's a lovely phrase, and also seems destined to be an inverse link. But
again we are amazed and disappointed that it
is not. We can only hope that our readers will provide
an
explanation of these enigmas.
Blab. Leaving no meme unmixed, a reader suggests:
Pot-playing poker-smoking
mediators reside!
You have nothing to chain but your losses!
Yow. Dave's
been saying
nice things about Plurp again. Frankly, we thought it had been
pretty sparse around here recently. 'Cept for that
Cheney stuff, about which we are still afflicted with self-congratulatory
giggles.
Plurp. And just why has it been so sparse around here
recently? we hear you ask. Well, you know, we don't know. 'Cept that
it couldn't possibly have anything to do with Santa Claus having bought
us the full version of Thief
II for our recent birthday, or its much anticipated arrival two
days ago, or our vague recollection of Helen handing us the box, an expression
of concern on her face and her saying something like Do make sure I
see you from time to time.
No. Certainly not.
Yo. In stylistic contradiction to our own
review of A.I., but in conceptual coherence with Generic
Literature, check out Ian's
review. Very funny!
Yo. Speaking of Ian, he
has apparently solved
the mystery of why Wednesday was a holiday.
We're glad to see that cleared up.
Plurp.
She can see right through
me, and often does, staring as cats are prone to do at something riveting
but invisible just behind you. Then her eyes focus again and she smiles,
as if pleasantly surprised that I have appeared.
Plurp. Driving to work today, the following was running insistently
through my mind:
Right here.
Right now.
Right here.
Right now.
This is the tag line for some commercial or other, probably on TV. I can
hear a small chorus of voices intoning it emphatically.
But I have no idea with what product, service or company it might be
associated.
Then it occurred to me that this was an emancipated meme - a
meme broken free from the fetters of its creators, free of its original
host, free to roam the collective mental world without homage to its original
context.
And it occurred to me that there are lots of these emancipated memes.
One I recall from childhood is the image of a beautiful woman sitting (or
reclining) on (or near) a bar stool, in ads that appeared every Sunday
in the magazine section of the Los Angeles Times. The ads were trying to
sell (someone, not me) "bars, stools and dinettes". I could not (even then)
recall the company that sold them. I definitely remember the image of the
women, though!
So the image of women fondling bar stools was an early emancipated meme
for me. (As was, apparently, the phrase "bars,
stools and dinettes", which I have never been able to use in a sentence
until now. In any event, it probably originated as "barstools
and dinettes", of which Google seems to find a lot more of, though
that's not the meme that stuck in my head.)
Readers are invited to submit
emancipated memes from their own experience.
What the heck is a dinette, anyhow? A little dine?
Yow. Speaking of faking orgasms, here
are a couple of great bios of the artist of that marvelously instructional
video.
 Dayna
McLeod was hatched from an alien egg in the great farmer's fields of
Three Hills, Alberta and has barked her way into the hearts of many a cowgirl
and boy since that day. She rides her horse with spurs, thank you very
much, and will always buy that last shot that puts you under the table.
Born in the back of a truck or dropped
from a UFO depending on whom you talk to, Dayna
McLeod hails from somewhere in Alberta. Dayna lends a quircky, Western
perspective to her performative and video work. Honing her skills at the
Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary with a diploma in sculpture,
Dayna is currently finishing her MFA at Concordia University. Active in
the performance community in Montreal, Dayna has demonstrated that she
can get along with others and not cry during nap time. Her artistic endeavors
are peppered with an informed academic opinion, while her feminism is tempered
with an irreverent and often bizarre sense of humour.
Plurp. Lunchtalk today devolved into Reality TV again. It seems
to have become an attractor because none of us can really believe it exists.
But if it does, we say, let's take it all the way!
Today's pitch is for a new Reality TV series entitled Breeding Ground,
in which the contestants compete for a slim chance at trivial prizes by
letting various kinds of creatures hatch in the bodies.
We'd start out with simple stuff like the bugs that woman on Survivor
had in her legs. As the going gets tough, we'd graduate to tapeworms and
then maybe bot
flies or urethral leeches. The final pair of contestants would get
to be hosts to something really fun like heart worms or brain
worms.
We know. It seems like it'd be a real slow show. But we have this great
editor in mind ...
Plop. Those fun loving fascists in Tampa have installed a video
surveillance system in the downtown area that scans peoples' faces
and tries to match them up with known bad guys. The world has gone all
bipolar about this, with half of us screaming Invasion of privacy!
and the other half shouting What have you got to hide? For some
reason, the debate seems to center around what "expectation of privacy"
you should have in a public place.
Now this is a sly way to frame the debate. Clearly no one could reasonably
expect to have serious privacy walking down the sidewalk in downtown Tampa,
where Emily "Busybody" Bumbershoots could sidle up to you at any time and
say Well, young man, does your mother know you come to downtown
Tampa, hmm?
But that's not really the same thing, is it? If I were walking around
in Tampa, I would think it very unlikely that anyone would take notice
of me, much less know who I was. They certainly wouldn't remember that
I drove a wee bit fast on the Taconic Parkway a few months ago.
But the computers would. Well, they would think in their air-cooled
silence, there's Mister Steve White walking around plain as day in Our
Beloved Downtown Area when we all know he still hasn't paid the fine that
we so justly metered out for his heinous driving violation. Mayhaps we
should dispatch some large folks with guns to track him down, eh?
Imagine this technology deployed pervasively in society so that, anywhere
you went, what you said, what you did, and with whom you did it were all
recorded, correlated and identified with you. It'd be like having Emily
Bumbershoots following you around everywhere you went (except in your bedroom,
of course, if you have the shades drawn, and if Emily is missing her court
order or other legal device). It'd be like having your own stalker.
So let's reframe the debate, shall we? The question is not whether you
have a "reasonable expectation of privacy". It's whether you have a reasonable
expectation of surveillance, of whether it is reasonable to expect
someone to be watching, and recording, and correlating, every move you
make.
Stated in those stark terms, fewer people might rise in defense of this
disturbing practice. Doncha think?
Plurp.
The blue dog
was deeply disturbed at
the thought that people
were watching
Wednesday, July 4, 2001
Plurp. It's Wednesday and, for some reason, a holiday
around here. We think it's some kind of ethnic thing.
And, probably connected with that ethnic thing, there were fireworks
tonight. We can't actually see them from our apartment, there being an
ugly blue apartment building (and perhaps others) in the way, but we could
see the bright flashes in the dark gray cloudy sky.
Curiously, NBC decided to televise these same fireworks, and they did
a remarkable job of synchronizing the flashes they showed with the flashes
we saw in the sky.
Afterwards, a London fog covered the area around our apartment, obscuring
even huge, brightly lit buildings just two blocks away.
Plurp.
In a previous life
the blue dog
was an ugly
blue apartment building
Tuesday, July 3, 2001
Blab. Fascinated by our pictorial description of what
it's like at work recently, a reader writes:
Which of those clowns is
Dr. Plurp and which one is Ian?? I have figured out Dave. He's
easy!
You know, that's exactly what people here at work say. All the time.
Blab. Enigmatic self-denial reaches its zenith in this reader
contribution.
Pot-smoking poker-playing
residents meditating on the meme-mixer's vacation, and gambling on when
he might return.
Who, then, we are forced to wonder, is the mysterious meme-mixer? Or what?
And certainly, why? We asked this of the passive-aggressive toaster oven,
but no reply was forthcoming.
Blab. From a minion of the Old Ones ...
Miskatonic
University
Cthulhu
for President. Why vote for a lesser evil?
And best of all....
Yes, Virginia, there
is a Cthulhu.
 Wow.
Lots of good stuff in the Miskatonic
U. site ("A Small Sacrifice for Knowledge"), including this lovely
exhibit,
a part of the Pickman Gallery
(still under construction, but we love the name).
And we do love the response
to the following letter.
Dear Editor-
I am 8 years old. Some of my little
friends say there is no Great Cthulhu. Papa says, "If you see it on Alt.Horror.Cthulhu,
it's so," Please tell me the truth, is there a Great Cthulhu who will rise
from the watery depth of the Pacific to clear the Earth of all living things?
------Virginia Marsh
Blab. From the eerie Midwest come yet more horrors.
Hi Captain Plurp,
If you're not game to attend a home
event of the currently league-leading Minnesota Twins, or if this
lively exhibit at the Science Museum isn't to your taste, here's
another reason for your consideration to visit Minneapolis & St.
Paul.
Your Midwest Correspondent & Tour
Guide
We are deeply impressed with the Museum
of Grossology (Grossology: The (Impolite) Science of the Human BodyTM),
and even more impressed with the map
of Charlie Brown statues in downtown St. Paul. Who realized that there
were fifty-four?
We consider it an ominous sign.
Plurp. I took a Spontaneous Vacation Day today, there having
not been enough Weekend last weekend. So I'm sitting here on the bed typing
and catching up on other peoples' Weblogs, while That Which Has No Name
is curled up beside me, his head resting up against my folded knee. It's
really quite endearing, in a maudlin sort of way.
Yo. If you were advertising wigs on the Web, would you do it
like this? Why or why not?
And what did they do with her body, anyhow?
 Yow.
Another
Helenism, perhaps even from Helen this time.
Up to her head
-
Up to her ears
-
Over her head
Plurp. There's a scene in all the trailers of A.I.
of this jet vehicle thing flying towards what was once New York, but now
it's flooded (global warming, doncha know) and only the Statue of Liberty's
hand and torch stick out of the dark waters.
Naturally, lunchtalk yesterday flowed in the direction of how
high the ocean would rise if the polar ice caps really did melt.
FITZPATRICK:
Actually, there is one worse scenario which involves the eastern part of
Antarctica melting along with the west. The east contains the bulk of Antarctica's
ice, and if it goes, sea level could rise more than 200 feet. That would
be a flood of Biblical proportions.
ALLEY: It would not be Water
World, there would still be land sticking out. But the coastline would
look enough different that you wouldn't immediately recognize it. You'd
look for that finger of Florida pointing down there and it wouldn't be
there.
(A helicopter chops)
And that, Pinocchio, is why the insurance for our apartment, our apartment
that's over a hundred feet above the street, requires a rider for flood
insurance.
Dogs and cats, swimming together ...
Yo. Google's new image search
thingie is amazing. Typing in random words like, oh, say, hoochie,
results in astonishing new discoveries of What's Out There on the Web.
Like the Shrine
of Bettie Page Look-Alikes. (Note: Takes forever to load, and definitely
not worth it when it does.)
Or, if you really want to get lascivious, you could search for flat
chest or buxom
blondes. Or maybe kinky
photos. Great stuff.
And who would have figured that there were over a hundred alien
autopsy photos out there? Not us, that's who.
Yak.
Do you think that people
who've been married like we have for over ten years have this much fun?
No one's been married like we have.
Yak.
Her hair was a color not
frequently seen on Earth.
Yo. Are you still using those magnetic finger rings to increase
your health? Make sure you pay the patent
royalties that you owe.
Yo. Ever wondered how to fake an orgasm? (See how you can't say
no
to that question? It's very insidious.) Well here's an award-winning
instructional
video. (Note: It's really big, contains language and stuff, and is
modestly funny.)
Plurp. What do you know, and when did you know it?
Plop. The last vestige of joyful childhood innocence can now
be found next to the packaged, sliced cheese products.
 PJ
Squares™ is an all natural product containing a slice of peanut butter
spread and a slice of grape or strawberry spread layered together in the
same slice. Each slice is wrapped in clear film that is easily peeled off
- similar to individually wrapped slices of cheese. PJ Squares™ is made
with fresh roasted peanuts and real fruit juice.
Moms love PJ Squares™ for the convenience.
There is no sticky mess, no torn bread, and no reaching into the jar for
that last bit of peanut butter. Even young children can make their own
sandwiches. Simply unwrap, put on bread or a cracker, and enjoy!
From the PJ Squares™ FAQ:
Is the product all natural?
Yes, the product is made with real
fruit juice and fresh roasted peanuts. There are no preservatives, artificial
colors or flavors used in the manufacture of PJ Squares™.
Are PJ Squares™ sticky?
PJ Squares™ are not sticky and can
be held in your hand with no mess.
Is PJ Squares™ patented?
Yes, there are several patents and
patents pending.
There are, indeed, patents on mixing
peanut butter and jelly, and on forming a continuous
sheet of stuff like peanut butter. We're not sure what else the clever
folks at PJ Squares™ have up their sleeves.
Plurp.
The blue dog,
like the wig,
was over her
ears.
Monday, July 2, 2001
Blab. From that Really Big
Blab Box comes ...
this
This being a bunch of buildings, apparently. How mysterious.
Blab. Plurp's own meme-bot comes up with this.
Carriers of reports/ratios
admonishing a pot-smoking poker-playing resident.
With jack-booted thugs lurking in the background, no doubt.
Blab. A reader who mistakes us for the complaints desk of a fast-food
restaurant rants:
I am soo pissed off.
Went to McDonalds today to try their new HOT Ham and Cheese sandwich and
when I got back to my desk, I opened up the package to find a spicy chicken
breast sandwich! Hell, if I had wanted a spicy breast, I would have
ASKED for one! Oddly enough they managed to put the honey mustard sauce
on the thing. most strange...
Take a number.
Blab. A reader named Helen makes up a variant of our
story about Bowdonia.
For those who need to know.......................
Bowdonia is the name of the country
that I am queen of. Steve is my consort. heheheh.......
Way back many years ago when he and
I lived in my sister's apartment there came a time when the place needed
painting. BADLY! The front hall began to peel revealing 5 or 6 coats of
really garish colors. The ceiling over our bed also began to peel exposing
the most interestingly shaped blob. After a while we discovered that it
really wasn't a blob but the long hidden map of an island country in the
area of central Europe. We determined that once there had been a great
ocean on the region of Provence. Its name was Bowdonia. After further research,
we found that that was where my name had come from. I wished that my father
was still alive to find this out.
Steve and I would lay in bed on Saturday
and Sunday mornings as the island would continue to reveal itself. We discovered
bays, peninsulas, mountains ranges (could this have been the early Pyrenees?).
We located the long lost castle and the bailey area within the ancient
walls. Our search was thrilling.
As you know, now the area is some
of the most fertile land in Europe giving forth wondrous fruits and vegetables
and wines. I unfortunately wasn't aware of my connection to my glorious
past heritage when we traveled thru southern France in 1986.
Helen
PS. Oh, by the way I have a bridge
to sell you if your interested........
We await thrilling stories of the Bowdonian Royal Navy, perhaps annexing
the Sudetenland.
Blab. A musically gifted reader sings as follows.
I have spent money. You have
clothes.
Your bear likes honey. I'm your nose.
Blab. A reader wonders:
Hrm... what's
most popular?
At least, as claimed by Yahoo!, which keeps track of the most-emailed photos
and stories in the last 6 hours. From this we conclude that Yahoo! readers
have even odder taste than Plurp readers, but they do share a healthy
interest in scantily clad women. Hmm.
Blab. A reader with unusual taste writes:
The Blue Dog may not be getting
any younger but he is getting more handsome and still has that cute butt.
Do be careful, dear reader. Your hobby, however exciting it may
be, is illegal in many states.
Blab. Reacting to the blue dog not getting
any younger, a person with a very short name writes:
The Blue Dog is lucky not
to get any older. Some of us do. ALL of us do (even ME!).
Reality is hard to alter. Time is even more difficult. But
the chocolate cake was worth it.
H
It does seem to be incontrovertible that reality (including time) is difficult
to alter (difficult in the Japanese sense), whether or not in the
presence of chocolate cake. But perhaps our readers can cite
counterexamples?
Blab. That short named reader writes:
Sorry, that Helenism wasn't
from me. It was our guest for dinner Sunday, Christine. But
thanks for the credit anyway. I'll try harder...........
H
... referring, perhaps, to yesterday's new Helenism.
But please don't call us Christine.
Blab. A busy reader writes:
Hey Dr P!
You forgot to tell everyone that you
and I saw "AI" this weekend and finally know why we need flood insurance
for our 19th floor apartment!
H
Who is this H person, and how does he know we saw A.I. this
weekend? He apparently knows details of our living quarters and insurance
arrangements! This degree of surveillance is just plain spooky.
Plurp.
 Movie:
A.I.
Demographic: Those old enough
to know what the title means and intrigued enough to think about it deeply
Plot Summary: A post-apocalytpic
world is the setting for an update of Pinocchio in which the puppet
is a robot child named David who can truly love his adoptive mother. Displaced
by the plot-induced recovery of the couple's human child, David wanders
the caustic world in the company of a robotic gigolo, his protector and
companion, while seeking to become a real human boy so his mother will
love him. While Kubrick apparently never set any of this to film, Spielberg's
treatment has large segments that are classic Kubrick in their ominous
and disturbing cinematography (though other parts collapse back into E.T.
or Empire of the Sun). The movie is rich in details of this future
world; several times I found myself ignoring the main characters just to
pay rapt attention to the complexities going on around them. Two thirds
of the way through, the plot takes a dazzling and completely unanticipated
leap, allowing it to end with a heart-rending moral dilemma and, ultimately,
resolution. We both left crying.
Distinguishing Features: Two
fabulous scenes that set up everything else. In the first, a colleague
asks William Hurt, the scientist who proposes to create a robot that can
truly love a person, what the responsibilities of people will be
to such a robot. In the second, David has just spoken with his mother about
death. His mother said that she will live a long, long time - 50 years
or so. Afterwards, alone with his intelligent teddy bear, David asks Teddy
if 50 years is a long time. Teddy ponders the question for a moment then
says, I don't think so ... Not that there is anything especially
amazing about these two scenes. Rather, they are small thoughts with sweeping
implications, and you'll find little jewels like these scattered everywhere
throughout the film.
Academy Award For: Best Retelling
of a Classic Fairy Tale for Modern Sensibilities
Verdict: Highly recommended.
Go see this movie! Wow.
Plurp. You wanted to know what it's like at work? This
is what it's like at work. And no, we can't explain further. That would
be rude.
Plurp. Following up on recent events, these stories.
Virginia Energy Crisis
Cheney To Be Turned Off On Alternate
Tuesdays
[...] "I feel fine," said Cheney just
before he seized up and had to be carried out by three Secret Service Agents
dressed in rubber [...]
Defibrillators Become Drug Of Choice
For The Aged
Florida Senator Blocks National Ban
[...] "While this administration does
not condone the use of electrical stimulation for recreational purposes,"
said Cheney, "we must bear in mind that uhrk, grrrhzk, k-k-k-k-khrrrp."
[...]
Maryland Bans Do-It-Yourself Heart
Implants
Mail Order Firms Capitalize on New
Fad
[...] "It's just harmless fun," said
Mary Cheney, daughter of the man credited with originating the fad. [...]
Cheney's Final Organ Replaced By
Implants
Life Imitates Art
[...] when the Vice President was
heard to say, "If I only had a heart." [...]
Bizarre Medical Mixup in Arkansas
Details Still Unclear
Speaking through his attorney, Hiram
Truckman, a retired tire retreader from Rose Rud, Arkansas, said he entered
Claymore Hospital to have his bunions removed and left with his right foot
replaced by a '56 Buick. "At least it's not a pacemaker," said Truckman
[...]
Plurp.
The blue dog,
being two dimensional,
had no butt, however
cute.
Sunday, July 1, 2001
Blab. Tarzan discovers humor, after a fashion.
Hahaha! Helen get NEW
computer??? Hahaha.
Ugh, B'wana!
Blab. The reader with the name that always seems to us associated
with bars in the Old West or a new and undersirable forms of instant drink
writes:
TerraServer
-pTang
This is, of course, part of the UCSB campus where, apparently proving the
perverse synchronicity of the universe, both this pTang character and we
learned the joys of higher education. If you click on the link, the two
Z-shaped buildings just below the center of the picture are, in fact, the
"boys" and "girls" wings of Santa Rosa dorm, or at least, were in those
Bad Old Days when I lived there. I lived there in the appropriately named
Diablo Hall my Freshman year, during which time over half of the pot-smoking
poker-playing residents flunked out. Except for the hall drug dealer, who
conned his way into Stanford the next year and is probably a retired Sr.
VP of Sales living in his chateau in France these days.
Those were the days - the days we are happy not to relive.
Yow. A new Helenism,
from Helen her own self.
Smokes like a fish
-
Smokes like a chimney
-
Drinks like a fish
Yak.
Helen: I was going
to buy you jewelry for your birthday, but I didn't.
Steve: Nah. You already bought
me jewelry - my wedding ring.
Helen: I bought you two
pieces of jewelry!
Steve: What's the other one?
Helen: Your watch.
Steve: Oh yeah, but I don't
regard that as jewelry. It's functional.
Helen: So's the wedding ring.
Trust
me!
Yo.
Doctors Call Cheney Obituary
"Precautionary"
Bethesda, MD (AP). Aides to Vice President
Richard Cheney said today that the Vice President was "still not dead"
after yet another medical procedure. Doctors characterized the procedure
to embed a device in Cheney's heart that will, if needed, transmit an obituary
to the New York Times as "merely precautionary." "It shows this administration's
support for the growing Internet economy," said Cheney in a prepared statement.
"I feel fine," said the Vice President, "and plan on several hundred more
years of public service."
Plurp.
The blue dog
wasn't getting
any younger
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